Each Sunday at Auburn First Baptist Church when we gather around the table of God’s grace for worship, we consider our worship service a collaborative effort. We enter the beautiful space of the sanctuary poised to contribute. It is why we gather our voices together in song, read responsively, and recite the Lord’s Prayer. There is participation in worship, where we are not passive, but active.
We might borrow that ancient, sacred image of worship proposed by Kierkegaard, where worship is a theater. If worship takes place on a stage as in a theater, and the leaders of worship stand on the stage, we might consider the ministers behind the pulpit as the leaders of worship with the congregation in the audience. Kierkegaard, though, recommends, and we wholeheartedly agree, the entire congregation is on stage participating in worship with God in the audience. We all lead worship with one another!
All of our voices, and lives, are integral to worship, so it comes as no surprise that on Sunday, February 24, we invite our college students to take a unique role in worship leadership. College Sunday is an extension of what takes place each Lord’s Day. We invite the voices of our college students to participate in worship with additional leadership.
It is a chance to extend their participation, which is formative for them and for us. Auburn FBC has a long history of ministering to and with college students. We can look around the congregation and see former college students, who now hold positions of leadership in the church, while they are raising their children in this place. We can also look beyond the walls of the church, where we see former college students as leaders of other congregations.
The experiences of the college ministry are formative for our students and our congregation. We gain so much from the voices of our college students!
As we participate in worship, it becomes a part of who we are, so we take it with us wherever we go! Worship reminds us that we are part of the body of Christ.
-Tripp